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Well, it’s been quite a while since I last afflicted the world with a blog post, and I apologize for that. The cycle has been something like: Crazy day at work means I have to stay late at the office, go to bed late, wake up with barely enough time to go to work in the morning, rinse, repeat, with class and homework thrown in.

So it’s been hard to find a time to blog. But I’m going to try to do better, getting back to a schedule of at least weekly. I need to wrap up the universalism series, and I’m reading through Jerry Coyne’s Why Evolution Is True, which obviously raises all sorts of questions about the nature and methods of God, some of which we’ve discussed before.

Likewise, I’m taking Restoration History this semester – a history of the Stone-Campbell Movement, a unity movement seeking to restore the practices of the New Testament church that, ironically enough, birthed three denominations: Churches of Christ, Disciples of Christ/Christian Churches and Independent Christian Churches – and that has led to a lot of questions worth considering about the nature and difficulty of unity in Christ.

So I’ve got some things to talk about; now all I need is time! I’m hopeful that I’ll better manage my time and go to bed earlier so we can continue to have these conversations. I don’t know about you, but I enjoy them, and they’re helpful for me as I process my thoughts on this journey.

I kind of accidentally on purpose took a two- or three-week sabbatical from blogging before last week’s post about homosexuality. Truth be told, most mornings I just didn’t have it in me to jump onto the computer and type away. So I didn’t. Call it burnout or just plain laziness, but that’s why I disappeared for a while.

With my post last week, I intended to resume a more consistent schedule closer to how I had been posting for most of the first year-plus of this little diary: twice to three times a week. But then my wife and I both got hammered with upper respiratory infections, hence my more recent absence.

But now I’m back! I definitely have some things to follow up on from last week’s post, but for now, as I re-enter the fray, I for one am grateful that one major player is exiting it:

You’ll have noticed by now that my usual rigorous haphazard schedule of blogging has gotten a bit off-kilter of late. My usual tendency is to try to post Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Sometimes one of those gets forsaken, and so I supplement with a Tuesday or a Thursday post. Sometimes, I have so much to say, I’ll even manage four or five posts in a week.

But this semester, my class is at 8 a.m. Mondays, which means I have no flexibility in the mornings to sit and write a post. I have to be out of the house by 7:30. On top of that, the class sis so writing-intensive, I’m taking two study nights a week, and a study night guarantees a 1 a.m. bedtime. Which means getting up early to write something is quite difficult. So that leaves Wednesdays and Fridays for posting.

I enjoy blogging, and I think it helps me process and retain what I learn in class, so I’m not about to stop. Nevertheless, the blog will be a little slower, at least until May.

I wound up reading 38 books in 2012, not all of them incredibly germane to this blog (ahem, Hunger Games), but I wanted to take a brief glimpse at the ones that affected me most, regardless of whether I’ve mentioned them here already. These aren’t necessarily the best books written in 2012, though a couple do qualify in that regard; rather, these are simply the best books I managed to read last year, in the order in which I read them:

Well, I’d planned to do a lot more blogging over the Christmas break, but stomach bugs have ways of changing one’s plans, and my wife and I spent most of Christmas and the days immediately thereafter awash in nausea and/or poop as one by one we all fell to the virus.

On that lovely note, Happy New Year! To ease back into the swing of blogging, I’m going to follow the crowd and list the most viewed posts from 2012:

For all the talk about post-Christian societies and all the fear mongering about impending secularization and persecution, the reality remains: If you are Christian in America, you are most likely comfortable, accepted – and extremely powerful.

The men didn’t get it. They betrayed, abandoned and hung him on a cross. Yet while he was there, who stayed with him? The women. They got it. They stayed at the cross. They returned to the tomb, and as a result, were the first to see the risen Christ. The crucifixion and resurrection stories do not have a “masculine feel.” Indeed, the whole life of Christ is decidedly opposed to the masculine norms of his day.

Two weeks ago, our church did communion down front, “Catholic style.” We all stood up and took the crackers and the little plastic cups from servers at the front of the auditorium. I brought my daughter, mostly because I didn’t want her getting into trouble way in the back while we were at the front. After I had taken communion, the sweet older ladies who were serving us leaned down to my daughter’s level and said (paraphrasing): “Jesus loves you very much, and this is the life he gave for you.” And she took her first communion.

Often when I discuss politics on here, I cast it in terms of morality and compassion. What does a moral, compassionate society look like, and how do we as Christians work to achieve that? I firmly believe one way is quit supporting organizations whose positions are morally repugnant and uncompassionate. The NRA is one such organization.

This insidious notion of the “deserving” versus the “undeserving” poor has infected every level of our discourse. It determines whether we roll down the window and give change to the guy with the cardboard sign. It shows up in our attitudes toward the impoverished who live in the neighborhoods around our churches. And it reveals itself, sometimes more surprisingly honest than others, in our political discourse.

Many Christians would likely condemn Les and Scott GrantSmith for their relationship. There was a time I would have, too. But love is a mighty, inexorable power. It leads a man to accept his partner’s new identity, and it leads a man to sacrifice himself for a people who despise him. It saves us all from the slavery of sin and death.

It’s no coincidence that Christmas occurs so closely to the winter solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year. In premodern rural cultures, the lengthening of the days (i.e., the “rebirth” of the sun) was a significant sign of hope for the coming spring and reason to celebrate. The parallels between the rebirth of the sun and the birth of the Son were simply too easy for the church to ignore them – and indeed why should it have?

[O]ur professor certainly advocates a return to the way things used to be, and that’s a fairly conservative position, even if what he envisions would be considered a radical change from how things are practiced in most churches today.

I’m not sure I agree with him – culture often has defined worship services more than any particular doctrinal stance.

[R]ather than spend my morning turning exquisite phrases of outrage, allow me to focus on something positive. This weekend, I read an amazing story from The Washington Post‘s Petula Dvorak about a transgender 5-year-old. Yes, you read that correctly.

The prophets in each case argue the technical aspects of the worship simply don’t matter – the songs, the offerings, the feasts, the prayers – it’s all worthless compared to how the congregation treats the poor, upholds justice, opposes oppression and loves others.

It was a good year for the blog; thanks for coming along for the ride. I’m grateful for your readership this past year and in the one to come.

With a paper due in less than two weeks, a final the week after that and Thanksgiving right around the corner, blogging is going to be light for a little bit. I have to get up pretty early to get blogging done before work, and late nights at the library make that a lot more difficult.

So have a great Thanksgiving, and we’ll resume our conversations next week!